12 Best Movies About The End Of The World

12. Interstellar

Christopher Nolan does not make bad movies yet his work is so ambitious in scope that it often divides viewers. The initial awe that Inception inspired quickly gave way to parodies about the apparent smugness of the complexity of the ideas at hand, South Park leading the way with their brilliant 'Insheeption' episode. Interstellar is a film open to the same criticisms. A 2014 sci-fi release, it was broadly marketed as a film made with scientific accuracy.

Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne was the film's consultant as Nolan ran big ideas past him - and this film is full of big ideas. Set in the near future, the earth is ravaged by blight and dust storms that are endangering humanity's survival. Matthew McConaughey's Cooper leads a team of astronauts on a space mission through a wormhole near Saturn in the search for a habitable planet. In doing so, he leaves behind his two children, who will be raised by their grandfather as their mother has already passed away. The film focuses heavily on the father-daughter relationship between Cooper and Murph, the adult version of whom is played by Jessica Chastain.

It is a film full of challenging concepts and most of them are wrestling for attention and understanding. The science behind wormholes and spacetime are explored but the biggest theme of the movie is love. Hathaway makes a cheesy speech about love transcending dimensions of space and time that was widely mocked. Yet this film took place at the heart of the McConnaissance and it's hard not to be drawn into the brilliant performance of the leading man, particularly the scenes in which he expresses his emotional turmoil. If the world ever ends, love may be the only weapon we have to get us out of that jam. Our love for Interstellar transcends cynicism.